Although he didn’t quite call it that.
Recently, we quoted a longish excerpt from early twentieth century Catholic writer, G. K. Chesterton on why he didn’t buy into Darwinism. Now science historian Michael Flannery sends us another bit, Chesterton on scientism:
I found this prescient observation from Chesterton in his Eugenics & Other Evils (1927) in my ongoing research on the opponents of eugenics:
The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by police-that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics.
Flannery adds,
By “Science” Chesterton, of course, doesn’t mean the honest and objective inquiry of the natural world but rather scientism. A moment’s reflection on some of the comments of Steven Pinker, James Watson, E. O. Wilson, and others hypnotized by the Darwinian paradigm will remind us that the eugenic mindset is still very much with us.
You can download the book here.
See also: G. K. Chesterton on how little good five percent of an eye is
Also, here’s a an interview with the author of a book on the impact of eugenics